• The Quiet Life [0:54]

• Solitude: An Ode [0:58]

• The Second Pastoral, or Alexis [an excerpt] [1:39]

• From An Essay on Man [1:08]

• Hymn [1:01] 

• The Dying Christian to His Soul [1:03]

• Summer []

"Alexander Pope, born in London at 6:45 p.m. on 21 May 1688 to linen merchant Alexander Pope and his second wife Edith Turner Pope, became the defining poetic force of his age. His poetic accomplishments contrast sharply with the physical disabilities and trying circumstances that plagued him. As a child, he survived being trampled by a cow but struggled with tuberculosis of the spine (Potts’ Disease) and crippling headaches throughout his life. The poet and his family also fell victim to the repressive measures taken against Catholics after the abdication of King James II and the ascension of the Protestant William and Mary, including prohibitions against openly practicing their faith and against living within ten miles of London. Later, Pope’s Catholicism would effectively bar him from the kind of open patronage by members of the court that had provided poets like John Dryden with a living. Pope’s poetic career testifies to his resiliency in the face of disadvantages of health and circumstance." Reference